Division of Comparative Endocrinology (DCE): 2007 Fall Newsletter
In this newsletter:
Message
from the Chair
Bob Denver (rdenver@umich.edu)
We are looking forward
to seeing you all in San Antonio this January. This will be my last
meeting as chair of the DCE. Stacia Sower will take over the reigns
at the close of the meeting. The meeting is shaping up nicely and
Michael Romero is now busy planning the program. This year we are
pleased to announce that Peter Thomas, Professor in the Department of
Marine Science and Section of Integrative Biology at the University
of Texas, Austin will be presenting the Howard Bern Lecture. The
title of his presentation will be "Nonclassical Steroid Actions
Mediated by Novel Membrane Receptors: Lessons from Studies in Fish."
There are many activities planned for graduate students at the annual
meeting in San Antonio. Also, the scheduled presentations mentioned
by Michael Romero below should highlight your experience. Please
encourage your graduate students and colleagues to attend.
Penny Swanson and Lynn
Riddiford hosted the Western Regional Conference on Comparative
Endocrinology (WRCCE) at Friday Harbor Laboratory March 23-25. There
were 60 participants with 32 oral presentations and 7 posters.
Professor Michael Adams of the Departments of Entomology and of Cell
Biology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Riverside
presented the annual Irving Geschwind Memorial Lecture; the title of
his talk was "Peptidergic Regulation of Innate Behavioral
Sequence." Immediately after the WRCCE (March 26-28, 2007) Tyrone
Hayes hosted the International Symposium on Amphibian and Reptile
Endocrinology and Neurobiology (ISAREN) in Berkeley, California. By
all accounts both meetings were great successes.
Your elected
representatives, Michael Romero and Cathy Propper have been doing an
outstanding job getting us ready for San Antonio. We have an
exciting program planned and I hope will see you at the DCE business
meeting and DCE social in San Antonio. In the meantime, be sure to
send me your thoughts and concerns about any aspect of DCE:
rdenver@umich.edu.
Message
from the Program Officer
L. Michael Romero
(Michael.romero@tufts.edu)
The 2008 meeting
in San Antonio, Texas
The program for the
upcoming meeting in San Antonio is almost set. A total of 1002
abstracts were submitted. Of these, 475 requested oral
presentations, 364 requested posters, and 54 requested either format
(if you checked the "either" box make sure you check the format
you've been assigned when the program becomes available). A total
of 66 abstracts indicated DCE as their primary division. The rest of
the abstracts were affiliated with a symposium. DCE is the primary
sponsor for what promises to be an exciting symposium on Yolk
Hormones. Several other symposia should also be of interest to DCE
members, including one on Recent Developments in Neurobiology and
another on Aeroecology (the ecology of things in the air). In
addition, there will be a symposium on teaching evolution to
undergraduates.
In addition to the
scientific sessions, several other events have been set. This year's
Howard Bern lecture will be given by Peter
Thomas of the University of Texas, Austin. His lecture is scheduled
for 6:30 on Friday evening (Jan. 4). It will be preceded by the DCE
business meeting and followed by the DCE social. I would also
encourage everyone to attend two unique additions to the program.
Randy Olsen, the director of the film "A Flock of Dodos," will be
giving 5 showings of his film followed by a discussion. There will
also be reduce-priced tickets to an IMAX showing of "Volcanoes of
the Deep" hosted by the director Richard Lutz.
This
should be an exciting meeting, and I hope to see everyone there!
Message from the Secretary
Cathy Propper (Catherine.Propper@nau.edu)
We have had some
wonderful meetings and have several upcoming conferences to choose
among. Bob mentioned already the WRCCE and the International Society
of Amphibian and Reptile Endocrinology and Neurobiology. Both
meetings went extremely well, and Penny Swanson, Lynn Riddiford, and
Tyrone Hayes deserve a great deal of praise for all the effort
involved in organizing these events. The current thought for the
next ISAREN meeting is that it will be held in 2010 in Berlin,
Germany, hosted by Werner Kloas. Of course, SICB will be in San
Antonio from January 2-6, 2008.
Some other conferences
coming up in the next year are:
The Endocrine Society's
Annual Conference in San Francisco June 15-18, 2008.
http://www.endo-society.org/endo/
Society for
Endocrinology's Annual Conference will be in Harrogate, UK from
April 7-10, 2008.
http://www.endocrinology.org/meetings/2008/bes2008/welcome.html
Society for the Study
of Reproduction's Annual Conference will be held in Kona, Hawaii,
May 27-30, 2008. http://www.ssr.org/Meetings.shtml
Gordon Conference on
Environmental Endocrine Disruptors will be held in New Hampshire June
8-13, 2008.
http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2008&program=envendo
6th International Symposium on Fish Endocrinology will be held in Calgary, Canada on June 22-27th, 2008. http://www.isfe.ucalgary.ca/lifetime.html
If you have any
information/announcements you would like to see posted in the Spring,
2008 Newsletter, please let me know, and I will be happy to post it
here. If you have any information that needs to go out quickly to
the DCE membership, also send it to me, and I'll make sure it goes
out by e-mail.
Announcements:
Call for Exceptional
Photomicrographs:
Do you have a
photomicrograph of exceptional interest and quality? If so, the
American Microscopical Society invites and encourages you to enter it
into the annual Ralph and Mildred Buchsbaum Excellence in
Photomicrography Contest. The contest will take place
January 3-4, 2008 during the SICB meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
Micrographs will be
displayed at the AMS booth where SICB meeting attendees may evaluate
them and vote for the best image in both black and white and color
categories.
Winning micrographers
in each category will receive a cash award, a photomicrography book
and a luncheon ticket to the AMS banquet at the next SICB meeting.
The images will be also be featured on the AMS website.
The contest is open to
all SICB meeting participants; up to 3 entries each. Submissions
must be prints, with maximum dimensions of 8 X 10 inches,
unlabeled, unsigned, and mounted on poster board or
foam-core mounting board. A single line of information identifying
the subject (e.g., "Mouthparts of a mite") and stating the
microscopical technique used (e.g., "SEM") should be below
the photograph.
Entries will be
accepted on the morning of the first full day of the meetings
(Thursday, January 3, 2008) at the AMS booth in the exhibit hall.
The deadline for submitting entries is before the exhibits close for
lunch that day.
Voting begins on the
afternoon of the first meeting day (January 3) and ends before
exhibits close at the end of the second full day (Friday, January 4,
2008). All meeting participants who visit the AMS exhibit are
allowed one ballot for each contest category.
Message from the DCE Representative to the Student/Postdoctoral Affairs Committee
Darren T. Lerner (dlerner@hawaii.edu)
Hello to all DCE
graduate students and postdocs! I am looking forward to seeing you
at our 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio (January 2-6th).
There are a number of
events that you should be sure to attend, some of which are
specifically designed for students. These include the Student "First
Timer" Orientation, immediately following the Welcome to San
Antonio Reception and the student/postdoc workshop tentatively
entitled: "I Have a Great Idea, But Who Will Fund Me: How to
Write a Grant". For this workshop, a panel of faculty members
will discuss and field questions on various topics ranging from how
to find funding opportunities to how to increase your odds of being
funded. Don't miss out! The workshop will be immediately followed
by the Society-Wide Social in Honor of Students and Postdocs. I also
encourage you to attend the SICB and DCE business meetings. Please
look at the meeting website for details
(http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2008/)
SICB offers a generous
student support program for the annual meeting and details of this
program are given on the SICB website
(http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2008/studentsupport.php3).
To be eligible for the program you need to be a member of SICB, a
presenting author, and be willing to provide one half-day of
assistance during the meeting. The program provides financial
support in the form of housing or registration fees. The deadline
for this program is October 26 2007.
DCE offers two Best
Student Paper awards at the Annual Meeting, one for the best oral
presentation and one for the best poster presentation. Undergraduate
students and graduate students who have not yet been awarded a PhD
are eligible for the award, as are new PhD's who have received the
degree no more than 12 months prior to the meeting. The work must be
original and must be carried out principally by the student
presenting the paper or poster. In any one year, a student can enter
either the oral or the poster competition.
SICB and a number of
other organizations offer student grants and fellowships. DCE
students may want to consider the following funding opportunities:
-
SICB Grants in Aid of Research, due Nov. 18th.
http://sicb.org/grants/researchgrant.php3
-
SICB Fellowship of Graduate Student Travel, due Nov. 18th,
which provides funds for travel and other expenses at distant
research laboratories, museums or field sites.
http://sicb.org/grants/fgst/
-
SICB Libbie H. Hyman Memorial Scholarship, which provides assistance
for students to take courses or to carry on research on
invertebrates at a marine, freshwater, or terrestrial field station.
Generally due in March. http://sicb.org/grants/hyman/
-
Fall 2007 EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships, which
funds research grants and graduate fellowships in numerous
environmental science and engineering disciplines. Closing date Nov
28th. http://es.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2008/2008_star_fellow.html
-
Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research Program provides funding for the
purchase of specific equipment necessary to undertake the proposed
research project and travel to and from a research site. Proposals
are due October 15th and March 15th. http://www.sigmaxi.org
The National Science Foundation offers fellowships for new students
(Graduate Research Fellowship
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=6201&org=DGE&from=home
, due early-November) and for doctoral candidates (Doctoral
Dissertation Improvement Grants, Directorate for Biological Sciences
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf05607/nsf05607.htm,
due mid- November).
Link to officer list on DCE page